Beyond a Total Loss

The strength of Beyond a Total Loss is in its commitment to a bit. Fundamentally it's an adventure game that rewards outside-the-box thinking and resource management. It's difficult but not unforgiving. Where the experience really shines is in the heavily deadpan commitment to a dark sense of absurdist humor. Minimalist music and tongue-in-cheek pixel graphics lend a delightfully demented air to the proceedings. Every screen of this was carefully constructed for the gag value or shock you get when a truly unpredictable danger kills you. If deadpan humor or slower-paced adventure games aren't your thing I'd pass it up but this is one of the funniest and most unique experiences on Steam right now. Highly recommend.

[b]Beyond a Total Loss[/b] is about a guy who--after spending his inheritance on some slick threads, glasses, and a sweet new ride--gets in a car accident on the outskirts of what can only vaguely be described as a town. What begins as a quest to find a mechanic quickly spirals into a surreal adventure to satisfy the "7 Ordeals" of a seemingly omnipotent person known as "the Warden". Wild dogs, game shows, secret labs, cults, and mutant knights ensue. A lot of people will immediately be reminded of LISA: The Painful RPG. That's no coincidence and, while they are very similar in spirit, the two games are mechanically different. Whereas LISA is a party-RPG with a sidescrolling/platforming world, Beyond a Total Loss is more of an action-adventure game with real-time combat and events that occasionally let you make different choices--sometimes obvious, sometimes not, and culminate in one of several different endings. There are some very light puzzle and item-hunt elements as well. Nothing especially difficult, and nothing that feels like a "pixel hunt". The biggest challenges will likely come from managing your limited inventory and making room for the weapons, ammunition, mission items, and alcohol you'll come across on the way. It seems very possible to run out room (or ammo) if you aren't careful, although I never had a serious issue with it, myself. Alcohol, in particular, is an interesting mechanic: Booze is your sole method of replenishing health and, while you can drink it straight, it's often preferable to save ingredients until you can combine them into a beverage--like a Manhattan, or a Gimlet, or a Moscow Mule--that provides a more significant effect. Some will permanently increase your health or inventory capacity, fully replenish your HP, make you kick harder, or even let you walk on the ceiling. Overall, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Beyond a Total Loss. Please note that while I have approx. 12 hours primarily around a single playthrough, I played [u]very[/u] slowly; the average is probably closer to 5-6 hours for a single run. Nonetheless, at this price, I feel like anybody looking for a weird adventure game will definitely get their money's worth out of this game. It's trying something a little different and I appreciate that. [b]PROS:[/b] + The setting is strange and full of genuinely funny/novel moments; Like LISA, I enjoyed how absurd the story was because I didn't know what would happen next. + For such a simple implementation, the shooting feels surprisingly [i]good[/i]. All three firearms have crisp audio and are appropriately "punchy". + Characters are weird but interesting, and it's not always obvious what consequences some of your decisions will have. [b]CONS:[/b] UPDATE: The developer has worked to fix the items I listed below in the initial review, and they should no longer be issues. - [strike]There are a few bugs, such as frequently being unable to access your inventory/shoot/pick items up ("inventory is full") upon dying and reloading an autosave. The problem seems to temporarily be "fixed" by going through a door/leaving an area and then immediately returning. I also encountered a reproducible bug that resulted in a soft lock, but it required a fairly specific circumstance to trigger it. - You need to be careful where you drop items: For instance, I made the dumb mistake of dropping a consumable (so I could rearrange my inventory) beneath a computer you can interact with; I was unable to pick it up again because at that point "use" would only interact with the computer. - Various grammatical/typographical errors. Not a big deal though. Maybe it adds to the charm?[/strike]

Awesome game! Only played for about an hour but plentiful save points, fun combat, and fun story. B++

Slightly recommended for the world and the humor, but the gameplay is not for me. There was quite some thought put into the challenges and the mechanics, and I figure if you're into dodging blades or learning timings in combat, you might enjoy it. But I don't, and since the resources are kinda limited I also feel that I've got to retry every time I've got an unnesseary hit or wasted bullet. And at least for my taste, retrials mean way to much repetition. I would have prefered more crisp checkpoints (for example [spoiler]when catching pigs in the lab[/spoiler]), but even then ... not my kind of gameplay and it does rely heaver and heavier on that. So I'm out. Recommended if you have a higher frustration tolerance than me and are into finger skills and timings.

对于这款游戏，我有些话说。 第一，有着生化危机4的风格。在遇到巨石跑酷，地上捕兽夹以及方格式物品栏时，不禁让我想起了李三光，是有些怀念。 第二，清奇的画风以及对话的黑色幽默。画风就像刚开始看JOJO一样，一开始是接受不了，后来适应，接着就彻底同化了，再加上沙雕的对话，沉迷的不仅仅是玩法，也是因为它的有趣。 第三，英文确实劝退很多中国玩家。我想，对于游戏的最大困难，就是看不懂它在表达什么，以至于自己只好脑补画面，在游玩过程中，确实常有看不懂的英文，但就像是艺术家乐于创作，玩家对喜欢的游戏也有执着的追求，借助于百度翻译，我大概读懂了剧情。我希望大家在这个浮躁的游戏界，沉下心来，去好好体会游戏，要学会有耐心去玩，游戏的趣味最大体现在 明白此游戏的意义。

It took me 6 hours to finish the game. I like the art style,remind me of Lisa the painful.Also the main reason i purchase the game. It delivery the content from the trailer. Resident evil 4 like backpack item managing. Can't shoot and move at the same time. Poor bald dude stuck in end of the world. The level related puzzle is easy to understand. Example: Door is locked, explore the level to find the key item from poor corpses. Switch some switch and back-track to the stair now you proceed from other angle. The main the character is an anxious dude ,his hand keep shaking while aiming make the player miss,add some tension to the game. In the second half of the game, player have to headshot several knight 2 time in the head to proceed the level.It require exact input or keep hit and run. I keep reaching the Gameover screen.Luckily the spawn point is near. The game have multiple end,but the choice is not obvious enough.It happen in the middle of the game. Too bad i stuck in the "bad" ending.

【BEYOND A TOTAL LOSS】Wait is this los....。這款遊戲說實在在操作上來說是非常的困難，雖然可能會因此感到遊戲製作粗糙，但遊戲本身運用了其他優點來彌補了缺點，各種惡搞/惡意的劇情，各種無俚頭劇情分支/成就，完全不重要的細節卻都有照顧到等等，遊戲結局或全成就要破完應該十幾個小時以上跑不掉。總體看來遊戲還是非常優秀的，價格也算非常公道而且便宜。

[h1]꧁ 1 RZECZ A ZMIANA WYTSZKO [/h1] jak to ? [h1]Fabuła[/h1] jetse chop rozbił i się samuch i teraz musz się uzeraci z niespodizwnymi przekoszdami [h1]GRAFIKA[/h1] widac [h1]Muzyka[/h1] no jest [h1]Rozgrywka[/h1] chodzisz torhe gdasz i stzrelearsz [h1]Podsumuwjąć[/h1] jeśli bedize na jakeis wielkiej obnice można się szaprnaic jak dlamnei srenido zostaiwam poztyw ale trkajcie jako netural ✂---✂---✂---✂---✂---✂---✂---✂---✂---✂---✂---✂--- Szukasz więcej recnezji lub zastnawiesz się czemu tyle błedów ? Zapraszam do obserowania i przecyztania opisu na mojej grupie kuratora https://store.steampowered.com/curator/7690491-Aga-i-my/

This game is probably the most underrated game of 2019. I recommend it, its interesting, its funny and fun.

I expected some LISA going into this game, but most of the gameplay ideas are more like Resident Evil. Explore labyrinthine levels, solve puzzles, manage your always too small inventory, and shoot things that are slowly shambling towards you while locked in place and trying to adjust your aim with the fastest taps of the arrow keys you can manage - probably the closest translation of tank controls you can get in a side scroller. Just don't forget to play the prologue in the extras menu when you're done. You'll never know what happened to Randy otherwise.